Lafayette, we are here!

                 
                                                        A series of fortunate events

Our itenerary for March 15 was as follows: check out of hotel in New York at 12:00, flight for London departs from JFK at 21:00.  Layover in London=1 hour 25 minutes.  Flight arrives in Bucharest at 14:30 March 16.  The train workers have planned to strike on March 16 from 9:00 to noon.  We have, counting our backpacks, 13 pieces of luggage to transport.  2 adults, 2 children available to do this.
Normally in the life of the traveling Ionescus, this would be the recipe for the Perfect Storm. After all, in the past we have set up for ourselves what we thought were flawless itineraries only to have it take us 37 hours to arrive in Romania.  So when we saw the events unfolding, we told ourselves we were in for our regularly scheduled traveling nightmare and made the following goals:
                         Do not scream at each other
                         When you see food, eat it immediately
                         When you have the opportunity to sleep, do so immediately
We stuffed our pockets with clean underwear and all the cereal bars we could find and felt satisfied that we were as well prepared as we could be.
And so we were shocked  when the following events occurred:
                          1. the hotel allowed us a very late check out and then permitted us to stay in their lounge drinking tea, playing cards and checking our email while they stored our luggage in a secure location.
                          2. the transport van took us, not to the outskirts of the airport as they had said, but directly to the departure gate.  13 pieces of luggage had to be moved about 100 yards.
                          3. at the gate there was no line.
                          4. all of our luggage was underweight and none of our liquids were confiscated
                          5. on the 747 to London there were approximately 12 other passengers.  This meant we had whole rows to ourselves to stretch out and sleep.  This meant no lines for the bathrooms.  This meant we could do pilates in the aisles.  This meant heaven. ( I assumed this also meant we were on a doomed flight that everyone else had the premonition not to board but here we are, alive and well...)
                          6.  we made our connection in London and the train strike was over by the time we landed in Bucharest where our luggage was all intact and waiting for us and where the weather was a balmy 70 degrees.
                        I have no explanation for this miracle trip except that maybe it was our turn to journey to Romania without disaster.

                        Dawn is arriving through the window: he slept stretched out in economy class: oh the poor fools who paid for first class on this flight!

Luci explaining to me that he did not sleep through the night because he was too busy watching movies.  As the flight was preparing to land, he informed me that he was then ready to sleep. Obviously he did not understand the goals as outlined above.

Yet another miracle: as you can see, this platform was completely unprotected, what are the chances that it would not be either raining, snowing or at least freezing cold while we waited for the train to the Bucharest station?

Its a joy to be greeted by dear friends

                                                        

Hai noroc, am ajuns!